What to do in an Era of Uncertainty
“As humans, we are wired to desire what we can control.”
Authoring a fashion blog induced the possibility for me to be vulnerable, opening up about my deepest fears to a close-knit community, most of whom have supported me for close to a decade. As I grow, I have embraced new channels such as Medium and YouTube to tell my stories — In the same breath, tempted to treat these spaces with similar sacredness like I’ve done with my fashion blog.
However, I’ve come to understand that telling real and raw stories as they transpire, is an important way of connecting to your audience. The pandemic has peeled off the security blanket off a lot of people raising the tides of uncertainty. In such crisis moments that have altered our reality, the question of what to do in uncertainty becomes inevitable. The question is often triggered by the plausible outcome of future probabilities and occurs when there is no tangible possibility to rely on.
Under current circumstances, the word ‘uncertainty’ is a fraught feeling affecting a large population, including myself, who have been impacted terribly by the sudden twist of events around the world. The triggers of uncertainty is the outcome of people battling unemployment matters, loss of a family member, navigating new work environments, or those leaning onto hope to navigate recent precariousness.
Recent conversations around mental health and reactions to government policies, have shown the ability of uncertainty to yield anxiousness or stressful situations, which can affect our cognitive function and disrupts our ability to be sane- leaving us hopeless.
However, this moment of variability can open us up to reinvent ourselves. It also presents an opportunity for us to question what we know, pursue new passions, and to capture fleeting moments of joy in a world ‘where sorrow lies not afar.’
Despite our innate ability to find ourselves again, it is not an easy tasks and requires responsibility, empathy, transparency, and dialogue with resources and people at our disposal. One critical question to ask yourself at this moment is, what resources can I pull together to be of service? so as to remind us that in a universe filled with oddities, small acts of goodness matter, that picking up new skills can afford us a distraction from discord and sorrow.
I’ve taken to these moments of uncertainty, which has created a vacuum to discover myself again. Also, I have worked hard within the last three-months to create a white-space, expand my truth through scholarly works and intellectual conversation and redirect my life towards the path of success. In doing so, I have embraced the opportunity to develop courage and explore new possibilities without doubt and fear.
I did not write this piece to answer any deep question but as an open-ended run-through of my thoughts and to draw opinions on what uncertainty may mean to you.
Also, I would highly recommend grabbing a copy of The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman and read a few articles that has inspired me this week finding peace with uncertainty, also reinvent yourself to face an uncertain future, and how to reinvent yourself in an era of uncertainty.
